Such a solution can be managed as a single system. Its resources can be dynamically allocated as needed, providing higher resource utilization and availability than possible with static infrastructures.

"Now we're in the execution phase of delivery against our converged infrastructure vision," said Tom Joyce, vice president of marketing strategy and applications for HP's StorageWorks division. "Certainly, that's true for storage."

HP on Monday introduced StoreOnce, its first internally-designed dedupe technology.

StoreOnce, like dedupe software and appliances from several vendors, can reduce capacity requirements by up to 95 percent by eliminating duplicate blocks of data across multiple files.

HP's biggest difference is its implementation of a single dedupe technology across multiple storage products, Joyce said.

StoreOnce will be available as part of HP's new D2D4312 backup appliance, which comes with up to 48 TBs of raw capacity. However, it will also be available as a backup client to HP's Data Protector backup software, as a virtual backup appliance, and as part of its scale-out storage appliances, he said.

"Until now, with dedupe technology, different products don't work together, even from the same vendor," he said. "Look at EMC, which has Avamar and Data Domain. A lot of their customers are stuck with point products."

With StoreOnce, dedupe works across all HP's storage products without the need to expand data to its normal size before migrating to other devices, Joyce said.

StoreOnce is a good move for HP, even though the vendor is late to the dedupe party, said Dhruv Gulati, executive vice president of Lilien Systems, a Larkspur, Calif.-based solution provider and HP partner.

For a lot of customers, it is still easier to add new storage capacity than it is to add deduplication, Gulati said. But for those for whom dedupe is the best solution, the ability to use the same technology across all their storage is important, he said.

While a large group of EMC's investors continue to hope that EMC will sell parts of itself to create more clear valuation for them, EMC is likely heading in the opposite direction by considering more acquisitions, according to a top analyst.